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Friday, 22 November 2013

"Home and Away” but never too far away from home..

A few years ago, like most Irish people
nowadays; myself and the missus headed off to OZ to see what all the fuss was
about. We settled in Sydney and travelled around from there.

One day we were both off work and
said we’d do something together. Now like most Irish lads, a day out sight
seeing doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest; bores the hole off me to be
honest. We had a row over a few ideas before picking a winner. Both of us are huge
“Home and Away” fans, so we said we’d head to “Palm Beach”
(SummerBay) for a nice day trip.

We hopped on the bus and headed
down. Emma being an organized woman packed a few things. Me on the other hand,
being the big lug that I am; brought myself, my wallet, a Meath jersey (typical
gobshite wanting to tell the world I’m Irish), a pair of shorts and a hat to
prevent my baldy head from getting scalded.

We touched down after an hour or so
of travelling. We were having a great day, jaysus it’s a grand spot I must say.
We said we would go for a walk along the beach before we got a bit of grub. It
was a nice sunny day, not much of a breeze; perfect stuff. We strolled along
the shore as the water lapped around our legs. Very relaxing altogether! Then
out of nowhere didn’t a whore of a wave, catch me off balance. Being the
awkward ogar that I am, I wobbled and eventually landed on my arse; absolutely soaked
with a mouthful of pissy, salty water to beat… LOVELY.

As the time passed I eventually dried
off and with the crack of my arse smothered in sand, we said we’d get the
spuds. The food was class. I went for the causal lunch; BLT and chips; you
can’t bait it. As I went to pay I reached into the pocket and there was NOTHING
to be found. The alarm bells began!!

“Emma, ehhh, do you have the wallet!!?”
I says to her in an awful worried tone(known well I'd left the house with it!).

“NO, sure you had it!” she replies and
just like that we made eye contact and both thought,

‘Ahh ballix!’

The fucking salty water must have
gobbled up my purse (which contained a couple of hundred dollars, my safe pass
for the sites and my monthly bus pass in it). NIGHTMARE!

Now, bullshitting the waitress to
tell her we were ‘just popping out to the
ATM machine to get cash and would be back in a minute’ was handy enough (I’m
not proud of it but sure what else could I say), the big problem was the fact that
we only had one hape of dirt of a phone with us that typically had just run out
of credit! How the fack were we going to get home!!?

Basically I was just going to have
to talk to the bus driver and explain what had happened and hope he was a
decent skin and let us on. This would be like a man from India stepping
on a Bus Éireann coach in Mullingar and trying to get a free journey to Termonfeckin.
My work was cut out for me.

Anyways, we were sitting at the stop
for ages, sun beaming down on top of us, waiting for a poxy bus to come. Both
of us, as you can imagine getting very, very pissed off with the situation, and
of course I was getting constantly bollocked out of it by the missus for losing
the wallet, as if I took the shaggin thing out of my pocket an threw it into
the ocean for the pure craic.

“JESUS CHRISSTTT woman it was a fucking
accident and if you keep at it, I’ll speak for myself when this bus arrives and
you can make your own way home!!” her giving out soon calmed down.

So the bus eventually arrived -. Now
picture in your heads this scenario; I stepped up onto the packed bus togged
out in a Meath jersey, had a pair of horrible aul Pennys shorts and a dorky Titleist
hat that I’d robbed on the aul lad before I’d left home. If that wasn’t bad
enough, I had the cheapest most worn down pair of flip flops you can imagine on
my feet. They were size 12, I’m size 14 so my big infected toes were sticking
out over the edge. I looked a right three quarter

I just took one deep breath
and said…

“Well how’s things, listen I’m from Ireland and I
came down here because I’m a huge fan of “Home and Away” so I wanted to have a
look at summer bay beach. We ended up going for a walk along the beach and
didn’t a wave hit me, knocked me over and robbed my wallet! Can myself and my
girlfriend please get on for free!!??”

I just stood there with a pure
browned-off head on me, not knowing what he was going to say or do. He looked
me up-and-down and began to laugh his head off and says in a fine cork accent,